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Jessica Bush
Date of Birth: 4/17/81 Location: Saltsburg, Pennsylvania Email: bubbaspu@hotmail.com Publications: Stirring V2:E8 Awards: Winner of the Sundress Poetry Slam
IN RETROSPECT:
You appear to me in dreams sometimes,
hair long and clutched in your fists,
face smooth and dull as antiqued bone china
from my grandma's basement
oh Rachel
this poem is about death and it is about you
who
in those later months would curl to fit beneath
the sink in the girl's bathroom
and I'd find you collecting water
from the leaky pipe in the reservoir of your skirt
the slow moons beneath your eyes growing
darker
and deeper with each new day
remember:
you were a virgin and told me once
that you thought maybe God would heal
your guts if you kept them sealed
but remarked in horror one thick evening among tubes
that your womb was cobwebbed
and your thighs sore from Catholic fantasy.
In my dreams you are dying
insides curdled and fierce I can tell
by the way you shudder against the thick
air of unconsciousness
remember the night we slept
arms clenched together in the wake of Mexico,
nudging smooth empty breasts against tequila bottles
like screaming infants and the terror of foreshadowing as you
curled shrimp-like on the cool bathroom floor later that morning
and gasped
to go home.